Guatemalan basketball adventures

After my strange night in Guatemala City I realized how much I hate large cities and the chaos that controls them. I got on a Chicken Bus (it’s pretty much what the name is) and took a 4 hour ride out to Panajachel to see Lake Atitlan. I didn’t have much time out there, but it was nice to see the country go by. Especially in an area that had recently suffered deadly mudslides. Most of the roads had been cleared off, but there were still some areas where they had been completely washed off the side of the mountain.

The lake itself was beautiful, but amazingly cold. Someone (I’m not naming names, Nicole) forgot to mention how damn freezing it was out there at night. I wasn’t prepared for that. Half way through dinner, I excused myself and walked down the street and bought a coat. I’m not sure if the guy knew how much he could take me for, as my negotiating skills were severely limited. He could have said $1,000 US and I would probably have said yes. In the end, I got a pretty cute wool jacket for about $30 US.

When I got back for my dinner, I struck up a rather pleasant conversation with a young Guatemalan woman at the bar. She only spoke Spanish. I only spoke … crappy Spanish. I was surprised how much I actually understood after not speaking the language in about 9 years. I’m not sure how long we chatted, but somewhere along the way she had asked me if I wanted to play basketball in the morning. Maybe it was my height, or my massive guns that made her think I was a pro basketball player. I get that a lot actually.

I got up early the next morning and did a bit of wandering around town before I met Graciea for her basketball schooling. Or so I thought.

It turns out that this 5 foot tall, 100 pound Guatemalan girl was quite the player. Granted, it doesn’t take much to beat me, but she really took me to the cleaners. Mind you, I was wearing running shoes and long pants. And, you know, my NBA contract forbids me to play outside the league. I mean, I was trying to take it easy on her for diplomatic and cultural exchange reasons.

Fine! She whooped me.

I was going to stay around Panajachel for the evening, but had to head back to Antigua so I could catch an early morning flight to Tikal. When I got back to town, I walked over to my favorite watering hole, Café No Se and found the same cast of characters. Noel had left for Costa Rica, but had left a goodbye wish – that was nice. The rest of us had some dinner, a few beers and headed off to play some pool over at Point & Feather (a true pub in Antigua). When Brenden and I walked in the Timberwolves were playing the Milwaukee Bucks. We were forced to watch, naturally, since he was from Wisconsin. Minnesota won … again.

Drinking, driving, freezing and 80’s music

It has been an interesting few days down here in Guatemala. I suppose after an attempted mugging/killing in the Antigua hills by banditos, I’ve learned to re-think my expectations of what might happen each day. I haven’t figured out if it is the country or just my stupid quest for something different that puts me in these situations. I have never been opposed to finding a bit of adventure from time-to-time, but I just want to make sure I live through them. This, it appears, is rather difficult in this country.

If you would have asked me a few weeks ago if I could ever see myself taking on the roll of sober cab in Central America at 2:00 in the morning, driving around a group of drunken Guatemalans, I might have dismissed it off-hand. If you asked me that today, I would say … I’m never doing that again.

It all started a few days earlier when I met a group of Guatemalans during Pub Trivia at Rilley’s in Antigua. We ended up having a few beers and chatting away the evening. I expressed my interest in seeing what it was like to be living in Guatemala and with amazing kindness, they said, “Sounds like a great idea! We’ll come get you later this week and you can come into the city, meet our families and we can go out to dinner together.”

They picked me up in Antigua and drove me back into the city I left behind. Along the way I met the entire extended family, which I found is a pretty common thing in Guatemala. It was fantastic! They found me a guesthouse where I could crash for the night – even though I was also offered a place at one of their houses. Far be it from me to push the limits of local hospitality. I was scratching my head, speaking broken (yet improving) spanglish and wondering how I got to this point.

And this is where it gets funny.

I got picked up at my guesthouse later that night and we drove to our dinner spot. It was Chili’s. Yes, the American chain restaurant, Chili’s! I thought it was a special Guatemalan restaurant that just happened to be called Chili’s, but no … it’s the real deal, with the red chili pepper logo and everything. I really think congress should make laws about exporting this crap. They really should.

As if being at Chili’s was not a delight enough, the main event of the evening was live music, but not just any live music. I was treated to one of the best 80s cover bands I’ve ever heard. They sang everything from Rod Stewart to Journey … in perfect English, hitting some notes that men should not produce. As the band sang, the crowd drank. A lot. I was paying particularly close attention to the booze consumption because I was wondering who was going to help me find my way home. I didn’t even know the name of the place I was staying and I didn’t have my rock with me as protection this time.

I feel stupid for having to admit that I “closed down a Chili’s,” but I did. And that’s when the party moved to a German bar just down the street where more drinking took place. It is local custom for you to buy the entire bottle of booze at the bar and pass it around until it’s finished, or blindness occurs. For some, I think they were pretty close to the later. With any foreign language, people become really good at it after a few drinks and then … really bad after a few more drinks. We were at the later part of the language lessons when it was time to decide who got to drive who home.

I won the jackpot!

It was mostly out of self-preservation that I took up the honor of being sober cab for the evening. Plus, I don’t think anyone else could spell C.A.R., much less find one, figure out the keys part and then drive the thing. I took the keys from the owner with the idea that they would co-pilot our way to my guesthouse and help me navigate the Guatemala City streets.

There were a few flaws in this thinking. First, the windows of every car in Guatemala are tinted black. Not dark, but black. I couldn’t see a thing. And it’s not like they just tint a few windows, they do the whole thing all the way around. Second, the only directions I was able to get from my co-pilot were, “go straight.” The problem is that none of the roads in the city are straight. There are curves, roundabouts and everything but a straight road. As I’m flying down the road, not knowing where I’m going, I discovered that I had been blowing through red lights without abandon. I figured a flashing red arrow was stop, but my co-pilot, with great confidence, kept telling me to “keep going, go straight.”

When we finally found my guesthouse, I had the obligatory, “I’m not going to let you drive home conversation.” In Guatemala there don’t seem to be any DWI laws, or at least they’re on a whole other level than the United States. We bantered back and for the before one of the other people showed up to drive my co-pilot home. I thought I was giving the keys to him so the other person wouldn’t drive. In the end, they both drove home in separate cars.

I still can’t believe I ate dinner at a Chili’s. Oh yeah, and I guess driving a car in Guatemala City was a trip too.

The friends and enemies of Antigua

I’ve spent the last few days locked in a holding pattern – somewhere between relaxing and a total chilled-out state. I sleep in a quiet courtyard room at a guesthouse where I believe I am the only paying guest. The only drawback being the hot shower that has two settings: cold and colder. My bed is made every day and I have fresh towels when I return from wandering around the town, markets and nearby towns.

I’ve become good friends with a few of the long-term guests over at Café No Se, thanks to the tip from fellow vagabonder Timo (355days.net). I have been told that I broke the group’s “no new friends policy,” but that doesn’t seem to matter anyone, especially the Café’s house dog, who has become quite fond of sleeping at my feet. We’re all part of the same breed in many ways, the only difference is that I have to go home at some point and this is their home. It’s been suggested that I should simply stay. Tempting. Very tempting considering they have standing poker games every Sunday and Wednesday nights. Plus, my team finished in third place at Pub Trivia on Sunday night – that’s a pretty high honor around here.

I spent the weekend exploring the inside of Antigua. And by that, I mostly mean that I’ve explored the inside of every local bar, restaurant and café. My guides, Brandon, Noel, Patrick and Beau make up the most eclectic group of people I’ve met in my life. Brandon runs Pub Trivia and a few other small operations around town. He moved down here three years ago after selling his business. Born in Scotland, he’s the self-proclaimed town drunk. He’s also a fighter, not a lover. Noel has been bouncing around the world for the past 15 years setting up excursion programs for Universities in the US. She’s setting up a base here in Antigua. New Castle, England’s own Patrick has been here for a few years, as well. He turns 61 next month and words can’t really do justice to his fantastic personality. Beau? I’m not sure anyone knows how old Beau is. If it gives us any clues, he left Ohio during WWII, and as they say, “once you show the farm boy Paris, he can never go back.” His kids still think he’s in Belize.

I left the group behind yesterday so they could get their work done and so I could see the Volcano’s outside of the city. The area is surrounded on each side by a different volcano – one of which is still active. There are daily excursions to the top of the mountain that leave at 6:00 am. Not wanting to hike up the hill that time of the day, I hired a horse and guide to ride up the volcano instead. We had a wonderful 3 hour trip that took us through some of the outlaying towns, up into the hills. My knees and back … backside were feeling it when I got up this morning. It was a great way to see the area, even if my body doesn’t have the natural padding it should to handle such a ride.

But with every positive experience in life, there must always be a negative. It’s nature’s way of balancing out.

I got up early this morning, dropped off my laundry, checked my email and headed to the outside of town to hike up a local hill that overlooks the city. I packed up my bag and headed off before the sun became too hot. The trail is hard to find, as it’s not marked and the trees and brush hide it from the road. Once I found it, I started to hike what seemed like 60 degrees straight up. It was dry dirt and gravel which made it rather difficult at times to get to the next level. After about 100 meters, I picked up the sight of someone coming up from behind me. He was a bit behind me and I didn’t really want to stick around to find out if he wanted to chat about last night’s Monday Night Football game.

My body has been cramping up a bit from the altitude of the city (5,000+ feet) not to forget the fact that most of my liquid consumption over the past few days has been in the form of Gallo and Victoria Beer, instead of water. The 800 milligrams of Advil I took right before I started out hadn’t quite taken effect. It was getting hot, my breathing was becoming more difficult and the shady Guatemalan man following me didn’t do much for my adrenalin levels.

The trail leveled out for a bit, which is when I confirmed that he was definitely following me. Maybe I’m being a bit presumptuous when I say that, it’s just that he didn’t seem to be the type to be looking for a scenic overlook of the city this time of the day. He picked up his pace and started to ask me questions. He asked if I had any cigarettes, if I wanted to buy some marijuana and ultimately he asked me for some money so he could eat. At this point I did a mental calculation of what I had in my pack and what I had to loose if I got mugged. I had about 700Q ($100) in my bag/pockets, my passport, my camera, my tripod, a shirt, my water and … oh, thank goodness, my friend the cobblestone.

After hearing stories from Brandon for a few days about the random violent crime across the city and Guatemala, in general, I had picked myself up a nice rock the night before on my way home. She was a beauty, a little over 2 pounds, well rounded, with a few sharp edges. She fit nicely in my hand and felt like a good security device on my walks home early in the morning. I thought my tripod would have made a good self-defense weapon, but I had to go any buy the most expensive lightweight tripod.

I cut up the hill to a half-hidden trail that was nearly a vertical climb. I remembered all the Viet Nam war movies where seizing the hills would give you the strategic advantage in any combat maneuver. Weighted down, cramping up and fearing for my life, I went as fast as I could before I found a spot where I could stand firmly and toss my bag someplace away from myself. But before doing so, I grabbed my trusty cobblestone and brandished it in my right hand.

This is where my Spanish came back really fast! I was amazed at the things I recalled from those stupid lesson tapes. For anyone who took Spanish, you’ll remember the deep voiced Mexican man that made the classroom rumble when he spoke. I conjured up my deepest Mexican impression and told the guy to stop and not to follow me up the hill. He started to come up after me. And the look on his face was not of someone that wanted to help me find the right trail to the cross at the top. I was too far away at this point to summon any help and I didn’t particularly want to loose my valuables – or life, for that matter.

He was about 3 meters from me when I took my stand and shouted down the hill, “tengo una roca y le mato con ella.” Which, of course should have been, “tengo una roca y le mataré con ella,” but I’m pretty sure Senor Moreno (my Spanish professor) will excuse the grammar mistake. It translates to, “I have a rock and I’ll kill you with it.” There was a stand off for a few very long seconds before I made an aggressive move to pitch the rock down the hill. I wasn’t about to toss the rock and loose my security device, but he didn’t know that. I’m pretty sure he was trying to calculate what it might feel like to get a 2 pound rock thrown in his chest at 60 miles an hour from 10 feet away.

I’m pretty sure that I could have given him a little push had he made any movement towards me, but I didn’t feel like waiting to see what kind of knife or machete he had on him. He took off pretty fast at that point, but I’m positive that he still had bad intent. I gave him a head start before I headed back down the hill. I knew there was a good chance that he and his friends would be waiting for me if I stuck around much longer.

I’m a little bummed that I didn’t get to go up to the top of the hill and see the view. But being dead would have been a bigger buzz kill.

Needles to say, I’ll be buying Brandon his drinks tonight for the self-defense stories and advice he’s given me. As for the crazy Guatemalans that prey on others, know that I would have defended myself to the utmost extent. On a philosophical note, I now know that humans will do what they need to do to survive – intent will conquer over everything, any day. In this case, my intent was to come out with what I went up the hill with.

For now, I’m going to enjoy a nice Guatemalan BBQ and think about what my next adventure might be. As for my best friend, the cobblestone? She’ll be coming with me on my travels and will be the best souvenir ever.

Antigua, Guatemala: land of free wireless?

It only took about 22 hours to book my airplane ticket, research some guesthouses, have a last minute drink with a dear friend and pack my bag before I was off to Guatemala. That’s a new record for me. I’m pretty proud of it, even if there is a footnote that I had made up my mind in the previous 48 hours.

The point of my holiday was to get away, relax, unplug, mentally recharge and enjoy my solo travels. Next time I’m going to schedule relaxation time to start in the mid-afternoon, and maybe consider not making all final preparations at the last minute.

I had a 5:15 am (yes, airplanes do fly at that time despite what I previously thought) fight to Atlanta for my connection to Guatemala City. After cramming the necessities into my backpack and making sure I took out the garbage before I left, I think I had about 90 minutes of unsettling sleep. When my alarm went off at 3:15 in the morning, I had no idea what the strange buzzing sound was. I walked directly into my door not once, but twice and now understand what real vertigo is like.

I jumped into the shower only to find myself with a handful of shampoo wondering where it came from and what I should do with it next. I’m not even remotely kidding on that one. But with a minute to spare I was packed, my bags sat on the curb and I was ready for my taxi. Only problem is that he had to stop for smokes and came rolling up a half-hour late.

I guess it can’t always be perfect.

Through the advice of several savvy travelers that had spent some time in Guatemala, I decided to forgo Guatemala City in favor of the smaller town of Antigua. One of my advise-giving friends spent quite some time in Antigua and spoke very highly of it. When I asked her what other places she visited, I was met with hesitation. Apparently, they have some pretty good “smokes” here too.

Baggage claim was easy, customs was a breeze, ATM conveniently located in the airport to pull out some local currency (Quetzales – Q: about 7.60 Q to the US Dollar). When I left the terminal I wasn’t harassed by any taxi drivers, touts, extra terrestrials or anyone else trying to sell something. I looked back to make sure I had landed in Guatemala. I took off my pro-traveler face and put on my lost-puppy look in hopes that some taxi driver would come up and see if I wanted to go someplace -- took about 30 seconds after that. I negotiated a ride directly to Antigua for $25 US. It’s only about 40 kilometers, but I wasn’t ready to deal with the chicken bus system or crammed mini-bus, so it seemed like a good investment.

It was at that point that I started to wonder if I could get a refund on tuition for my college Spanish classes. I took 4 years in high school and 3 semesters in college of Spanish. By all academic standards I was supposed to be fluent by the time I finished. Something went horrifically wrong with my language recall and I found myself going back to the universal language of grunts and pointing. My broken Thai is better than my Spanish these days. Maybe I ought to eat at Chipotle more often to improve my skills (and waistline).

We made it to the city in about a half-hour where I found a small guesthouse off a quiet side street for only $16 a night. That’s high by some standards, but the room was cute and the staff was friendly. I can find someplace cheaper another day.

I dropped my bag and set out to explore the tiny colonial village. With her cobblestone streets, cracked sidewalks and color washed plaster walls; I can understand why someone would want to stay here for a long time. I’ll save you the complete history lesson, but will offer up these quick facts: was one of the great cities of the Spanish empire, former capital of Guatemala, tons of earthquakes, churches and a healthy nightlife.

The highlight of my first day was finding The Bagel Barn which not only served up a great latte and plain bagel with a smear of cream cheese, but it also had free Wireless Internet access. That’s just about the strangest and most unexpected things I’ve ever encountered in my years of traveling. Not to forget that giving an Internet-guy free wireless in the middle of a third world country is like tapping crack right into his veins. Oh thank you, Bagel Barn. Thank you. I need a hit.

I’m spending today exploring the city, getting my obligatory traveling haircut experience and wandering the market. I’m tentatively planning on hiking up one of the surrounding volcanoes tomorrow – although the horseback ride to the rim sounds a bit more fun and a wee-bit less strenuous. I’m going to chat about it and seek advise from the young gal that runs my new guesthouse. She lived in Stillwater, Minnesota for a year not so long ago. This planet is getting far too small.

As I sit her in the central park on a beautiful day, flanked by four young Guatemalan boys, I wonder what life would have been like 50 years ago. No computers, no Internet, no convenience of modern bathrooms. Then again, I’m also wondering if my sudden cravings for Bagels aren’t just one of Pavlov’s experiments. Damn them!

Guatemala Bound

In an unofficial poll taken last week, the majority of people voted that I should go to Morocco or Cuba. Which means I'll be going to Guatemala. I know ... I can't take directions very well. But there are some very good reasons why I chose Guatemala for this trip and saved the others for later.

I haven't taken any vacation this year, which means I have about three weeks to use. If I take a nice 10 day trip to Guatemala over Thanksgiving, that saves me two weeks in December for a longer trip to Morocco. Plus, Guatemala is in the Central timezone, so I won't have any jet lag and I can get right back to work when I return home.

Makes sense?

I hope so, but I'm not positive yet. The flights were cheaper last week. As they always are. Next time I swear that I'm going to book my flight early. Or at least a week before my trip. I'm sure there's some medical condition related to not pre-planning my vacations. Who knows?

I'd much rather be in Thailand right now. But who wouldn't, right?

I picked up a guidebook over the weekend and printed out a map today. I'm trying to figure out the best route to take where I won't have to sit in the back of a "chicken bus" all day long. Alas, Guatemala doesn't have a railroad system (at least not now), which means I won't be able to ride the rail again. I was tempated to fly into San Salvador and take the train up to the border from there. Not sure about that yet. I suppose I should make that decision soon -- like in the next 10 minutes.

So ... if you're looking for me to celebrate the Thanksgiving Holiday, I won't be around. I will send out an update or two from the road to let you all know what it's like. I'm also traveling with my new Vaio (4.3 pounds of wonderful digital excellence). Hopefully I won't get jacked on the side of the road.

Better check my insurance policy. And better quick change my life insurance policy to someone who won't hire someone to whack me while I'm away.